Stop Cash Shrink

Landlords, lawyers, CPA’s, electricians, plumbers, bookkeepers, insurance companies, home improvement stores, pizza delivery, and numerous other businesses are providing products and services to marijuana related businesses (MRB’s) and are receiving proceeds from marijuana sales. Also included in that list are all the states, counties, and local municipalities that are receiving tax revenue from MRB’s.

I was at a speaking engagement last month and a banker from a state without legalized marijuana felt confident that they nor their proceeds had any association with MRB’s. I asked if they or any of their account holders owned any of the popular mutual funds by Vanguard or Fidelity. Their answer was “yes”.

What they didn’t realize was that widely held stocks, such as Scotts Miracle-Gro, are holdings in several index and mutual funds, and that Scotts has been increasing its cannabis-focused Hawthorne Gardening subsidiary for the past several years. The dividends they pay contain marijuana revenue, and those monies eventually find their way into financial institutions and accounts across the United States. The point here is that even if you are in a state without legalized marijuana, you have investors and monies in your state, whether direct or indirect, that touch the marijuana space.